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How is the textual address of the tower the phone is registered to, shown in many basic keypad phones such as NOKIA 1100 and the one in this image attached?

enter image description here

It shows three things

  1. BSNL MOBILE Home Network Doesn't change at all for this particular SIM
  2. CellOne Current network provider phone's registered to. This would change to AIRTEL if only airtel tower is available, helps know if we are on other providers network or on roaming
  3. 2-Anaikattu Road Address (Text) of the current tower. This keeps updating as I move to different places but never a blank unless there's zero signal

FYI, this phone does NOT have

  • GPS device inside
  • capability of connecting to/interacting with Internet by any means (except via SMS using services)
  • a special custom mechanism/app that sends/receives SMS to find this info.

I dont seem to find this information anywhere in any android phone I've seen so far. How do I get it in android/ios?

Note: This question is NOT about

  • Finding exact latitude and longitude
  • Using Geolocation API to find out Address
  • Using Internet to fetch details from any db, service, or website

which is why I couldn't find answer here or here or in the links found in those answers.

Vadim Kotov
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Saravanabalagi Ramachandran
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  • After a quick Google, it appears that cell phone towers send their ids to the phone when connected. If you know that id, you can find the location of the tower, as shown on [this website](http://opencellid.org). I'm not sure of exactly how the Nokia 1100 does it offline, hence I'm not posting it as an answer. However, I suppose that the SIM card has a list of towers that can be looked up by id without requiring a connection. – kabiroberai Aug 12 '16 at 17:49
  • Why do you need this data anyways? If you're ok with it requiring the internet, I can post an alternate method that uses an API for Cell ID to location lookup. – kabiroberai Aug 12 '16 at 17:53
  • While the fact, that NOKIA _could_ have pushed a nationwide db of IDs and locations for all possible operators onto the supersmall storage that could not store more than 100 contacts, is NOT convincing, it is plausible that those info rests inside the SIM: If true, why would almost ANY android phone is not making use of that information...? – Saravanabalagi Ramachandran Aug 13 '16 at 07:17
  • Why do I need this data...., seriously? Why wouldn't anyone want this data, when they can get their approx. location just like _time and date_ in their phone with no INTERNET or no GPS or no extra effort required, **JUST LIKE THEY USED TO WHEN USING NOKIA 1100**? – Saravanabalagi Ramachandran Aug 13 '16 at 07:30
  • Consider I'm on a mofussil bus travelling for several kms, tired and half asleep, I would just hit the power button to see **Date, Time, Location, Network Provider** all at once (as shown in the image) if I had a basic phone, and if I had a premium smartphone, desperately wait for internet to connect hoping that its anything but _EDGE_ or _GPRS_, turn GPS on if off and wait for GPS to lock in, open the app or swipe to the screen containing the widget, and look at the location, how ridiculous! – Saravanabalagi Ramachandran Aug 13 '16 at 07:50

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